A bit of sunshine came to the fine arts program in my school yesterday.
Seems that we are the recipient of a grant called "Musical Awakenings."
No doubt this has come our way because our campus administration values
the arts and understands how so many of our kids learn best through the
arts. When school started this year, our principal insisted that we add
a drama specialist to our team (a) to keep fine arts class size the same
as general class size and (b) to address interdisciplinary learning
objectives (translate that to better test scores).

I digress ...

This wonderful grant will bring three professional musicians to our
campus over a three-month period in the spring. Each musician will
present a 45-minute piano recital to one grade level and then provide a
one-hour workshop to those kids.

One of the recitals is too fabulous to be true. Olga Kern, the 2000
gold medalist from the Van Cliburn Piano Competition, will perform for
and work with our 4th grade students. The fine arts faculty is gearing
up to develop some substantial curriculum for these programs. Another
BIG task is locating a quality musical instrument for Kern to play.
Somehow the always out-of-tune upright Baldwin doesn't seem quite up to
snuff for this workout!

I'll keep you all updated on this. We suspect that our fine arts
program will get some local publicity for this and we plan to use that
to our benefit.